DR. SPOFFORd's address. 11 



shores. The other maritime counties of this State, wonld suffer 

 much on a comparison with Essex. And along our southern 

 coast, Virginia, the Carohnas, and Georgia, present for the most 

 part, for eighty or one hundred miles from the sea, pine barrens, 

 sandy plains, and swamps, abounding in noxious insects, and 

 venomous reptiles. A single swamp, lying in Georgia and 

 Florida, is one hundred and eighty miles in circumference ! and 

 no degree of fertility, or an everlasting summer could compen- 

 sate for the pestiferous exhalations, which during many months 

 of the year load every breeze with pestilence and death. Ano 

 ther medical friend,* who spent a summer, in Charleston, 

 South Carolina, informs me that though that city is extremely 

 unhealthy, compared with northern cities, yet the country around 

 it, is vastly more so. Very few white people live in, and as few 

 as possible attempt to cross over the level country for sixty or sev- 

 enty miles back of Charleston in summer. To go beyond the ram- 

 parts of the city, especially in the nighttime, is for many months 

 almost certain death ! Now what degree of fertility added to 

 our soil, would compensate for such an atmosphere ? 



Casting our eyes to the southwest, the country along the 

 lower Mississippi, must have been once an immense bay, or arm 

 of the Gulf of Mexico, but the alluvial deposit, floated annually 

 down this immense river, from the boundless west, has filled up 

 this bay : and made most of it into swamp, and part of it into 

 something like dry land. The immensity of waters from three 

 thousand miles, and ten thousand hills, still kept a main channel 

 through this wilderness of roater and mire and driftivoocJ, and 

 depositing more soil, when the thickened waters first spread from 

 the main channel, than was carried farther back, the banks of 

 the river became much higher than the back country. 



The fertility of this soil, and advantages for commerce have 

 allured people to settle along this river bank : and an artificial 

 dam has been erected for one hundred and seventy miles above 

 New Orleans, to keep the waters in the river during its annual 

 overflow! and to defend the city of New Orleans, and the 

 plantations which lie behind this bank, from inundation ! Here 



* Alonzo Chapin, JI. D. now Missionary at the Sandwich Islands. 



